Mod: More Trade Ships, NPC ships spend less time docked

[Loki999]

Tested vs Alpha 29. Upsides:* Increases the number of trade ships in a system up to 100 max (it will go higher, if you want to remove the cap, comment out lines 344 to 346). Number generated is based on the number of starports in a system plus other factors.* Also, reduces the amount of time ships stay docked. They shouldn't remain docked for more than 2 hours (i think). Means you rarely have to wait long to get a parking place (unless there is a big queue).* A lot more traffic in systems, giving the feel of a living universe. On the downside:* On less powerful computers it can result in slowdown, although i find graphics a bigger performance hit anyway.* You'll notice more suicidal pilots (existing bug at least in Alpha 28 where NPC autopilots would cause ships to slam into the ground near starports). Always funny to watch though. [url]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29921927/TradeShips.lua[/url]

[shadmar]

Nice I like the increase in traffic.  Think about it today, an modern airport have takeoffs and landings every minute.I'd like it to be very busy, and docktime should be really be 10 minutes or so (with fast load/unload) Above earth there should be police patrolling orbit, local tradeships, misc service ships etc..

[Loki999]

Well, when more stuff becomes more exposed to Lua, some of that may become possible. I had a stage 2 planned for this, but currently busy modding for another game so that takes the little time i have at the moment.

[Potsmoke66]

hmm...let me counter to that,i always expected you would stay a little longer...i mean, imagine you would be really sitting for weeks (even with stardreamer, not very pleasing) in a cockpit of a eagle,now you enter a spacestation or probably a orbital city with bars, restaurants, casinos, gyms, pools, arenas, fightclubs, whatever entertainment that pleases you,would you really leave after a hour or two? i know all of this is not to see on the panel, but for sure a spacestation will offer some of that depending on it's size. actually a human player doesn't stays longer as a few minutes, but this is only because there is no entertainment.what brings us to this pilots lounge idea,and then let your mind go... a "stupid idea",wouldn't it be "easy" to build a sort of Arcade Hall, just to play a round of pac-man between two missions... but i guess you see what i'm thinking of (thought of since...). anyway, even if we haven't the possibility to distract ourselfs from the hard life at the frontier in pioneer, it's to expect that this will exist. let's imagine spacestations a a sort of "goldrush towns", a lot of people who only wait to get your hard earned "gold"... --- and erm, escort service? ok, it can take a little longer... --- i guess the stations haven't the proper size for what would be little a more realistic situation. anyway, thanks for the post, because i wasn't sure if i should argue about that we have only the possibility for a max. of 4 docks. to have something like ships come in and leave in a more reasonable amount, you need 10 to 100 Docks,ok, that's far to much... but a maximum of 10 would already make a little more sense, you could enhance traffic and let ships stay longer. you know i would liked to get the "orbital city" of FE2 into my "FFE mod". planned i had 8 docks and i wasn't little surprised to see that i can have only 4.anyway 4 or 8 docks, if i would have get working (problem is, it's to big) i would have liked to label the docks randomly betwween 1 and 100.because such would be easy to imagine for a orbital city of this size. --- i know it's a little boring to wait for a ship leaving the often occupied single dock stations, additonally we have 2! of them vs 1 with 4 docks in a standard pioneer, so naturally it's selected more often. one problem i'm aware of since i don't know, the stardreamer should have smaller range, means it should be possible to engage at least factor 3, better factor 4, when you wait for something, i.e. wait for the launch of a ship. of course i don't like to leave the objects frame to do this. actually, as a sort of hint, fly away from the station until you can engage stardreamer4x, lose unfortunately relative position to target because you leave the objects frame, wait until ship has launched (check this by requesting for clerance over and over. for assasinations wait for missions target time minus what you expect you need to (re)approach). if you re-enter a station from outside it's frame, make sure to request clearance each time it runs out of time, this grants you it will stay free for you.because it has happened more then once to me that the station was occupied again meanwhile i was approaching.

[Cody]

 just to play a round of pac-man between two missions...Heh... we have an Asteroids 3D OXP for entertainment purposes, available at any station.A great way to relax between missions, is a twenty minute session of Asteroids 3D!

[Loki999]

potsmoke - can just land near the station and put the stardreamer on x5. And just had a fun moment when was on auto-pilot going to station, and there was a constrictor queued up waiting for a free slot. Too late i realized my auto-pilot was taking me straight to the same spot where the constrictor was hovering. Bam! "Piracy is not tolerated here!" Out come the viper defense craft. I'm trying to run like buggery, zap zap, i'm dead. Lesson learned: Auto-pilot is a suicidal maniac.

[Potsmoke66]

yeah, watch the "meteor storm" in a high frequented system when you rough land near a starport and put the stardreamer on 5x (again if the message appears "ship detected nearby"...

[baobobafet]

Loki999: Normally I've had no probs with the mod so far - good to have life in 'them thar hills' :)I did have one odd instance: Error:[string "modules/TradeShips.lua"]:802: Ship:AiFlyTo () cannot be called on a ship in hyperspacestack trackback:[C]: in function 'AiFlyTo'[string "modules/TradeShips.lua"]:802: in function?[string "libs/00-Event.lua"]:32: in function < [string "libs/00-Event.lua"]:177> Hopefully got my error report typing correct. 

[Loki999]

Thanks for the report. Ill look into it. I've found a couple of bugs with the core build due to the increased traffic. There are some rare edge cases which can cause the game to crash, but due to relatively few ships that are normally around they rarely happen. By using my mod it increases the likelyhood that you encounter one. That's an interesting one though, don't think i've seen that before. Trying to give a command to a ship to fly somewhere when its in hyperspace. Think i should be able to hack a fix for that.

[Loki999]

Made a possible fix and uploaded. Its a strange one. The error (at least according to your feedback) is occuring in onShipCollided... how a ship can collide in Hyperspace ill never know. Anyway, i've put an extra check in for that, and will see if it occurs again.

[Metamartian]

well to counter Potsmokes' counter, surely as a pilot trying to make money, time on the ground is time wasted? The people being carried as passengers may stay for longer than an hour or two but pilots who need to be getting from one port to another to keep the green rolling in (are credits green in pioneer? is there even a paper currency or is it all electronic...anway..) would spend as little time as possible on the ground. Even is the pilot wanted to spend some time on the ground then I am sure the spaceport itself would arrange for the ship to be remove off the pad and put into storage/parking/garage (or whatever) as they would as quick a turnaround as possible to make as much money as possible??

[fluffyfreak]

how a ship can collide in Hyperspace ill never know. Thargoids?

[baobobafet]

So THAT's what that pink thing was

[fluffyfreak]

How to install mods: is on the wiki  There's currently no plans or work going on with the factions, exploring or colonisation side of things that I know of. Feel free to discuss what you'd like to see, but don't be surprised if people suggest picking up the Lua scripting and doing it

[fluffyfreak]

Ah in that case it hasn't been packaged as a mod  Maybe best to drop Loki999 a PM (private message) Alternatively you can open the folder where you've extracted Pioneer too and look in the "data/modules/" folder, it has a file called "TradeShips.lua", backup that file then replace it with the one from dropbox. It might work, it might not as it was made for Alpha 29 and we're about to release Alpha 32. Give it a try though. Hope that helps.